Ealing Council will buy all 95 flats at Bollo Yard in Acton and let them at social rent from 2028. It is its third bulk purchase from a developer in 14 months.
Ealing Council has agreed to buy all 95 new flats at Bollo Yard in Acton and let them at social rent. It announced the deal on 26 August. The block is going up on Bollo Lane, between Acton Town and South Acton stations.
The change is in the tenure, not the building. The 95 flats had been intended for sale as shared ownership and for letting at 80% of market rent. All of them will now go to households on the council’s housing waiting list, at social rents the council says are lower than the 80% figure they replace.
What the council has published about the scheme:
- a mix of one, two and three-bedroom flats
- demolition on the site has already started
- completion is expected in 2028
- Ealing’s council rents average less than a quarter of equivalent private rents
The third deal in 14 months
This is not a one-off. It is the third time since June 2025 that the council has bought homes in bulk from a developer, and the two earlier deals are due to finish this autumn.
June 2025, Southall. The council agreed to buy 180 homes at Berkeley Homes’ Green Quarter development. Of those, 96 are at social rent and 84 at London Living Rent. It paid with a grant from the Greater London Authority’s Affordable Homes Programme 2021-2026 plus borrowing, and said the homes would be finished and let by early autumn 2026.
October 2025, Acton. The council agreed to buy 110 homes on the site of the old South Acton estate, being built by L&Q and Vistry Group. They had been intended for open-market sale. The council said they would be ready to move into by autumn 2026.
August 2026, Bollo Yard. The 95 flats above, for 2028.
Add the council’s own figures together and the three deals come to 385 homes.
The reason the council gives is market failure rather than ambition. It says the number of new homes started by councils and housing associations in London fell by 91% between 2022 and 2024, after labour, materials and borrowing costs rose sharply. Private developers, it says, are finding schemes hard to make viable and sales slow. Buying finished or nearly finished blocks is a way of turning homes built for sale into homes for rent without starting a site.
The waiting list figure keeps moving
Each of the three announcements quotes the size of the queue, and the number the council uses has fallen a long way in 14 months:
- 19 June 2025: “almost 8,000 households on the waiting list for a long-term council home”, with temporary homes provided to “around 3,000 families”
- 9 October 2025: “almost 7,500 families on the waiting list for a council home”, with short-term emergency housing for “more than 2,500 local families”
- 26 August 2026: “more than 6,000 households on the waiting list”, with “thousands of people” in temporary accommodation
The council has not explained the change, and these are round descriptions rather than a published series, so they should not be treated as a measured fall of any particular size. The one hard figure covering the same period comes from the council’s statutory return to government: 7,813 households were on Ealing’s housing register at 31 March 2025, every one of them in a reasonable preference category, according to MHCLG’s Local Authority Housing Statistics for 2024-25. The next return, covering 31 March 2026, is the number to check the council’s “more than 6,000” against when it appears.
Councillor Louise Brett, the council’s deputy leader and cabinet member for safe and genuinely affordable homes, said: “By buying homes and letting them to local people at genuinely affordable rents, we are taking decisive action to tackle the borough’s ongoing housing crisis.”
What it means for you
If you are on the housing register, none of these 95 flats can be bid for yet. Bollo Yard is a 2028 completion. The Southall and Acton homes are the ones the council says are due this autumn, and they will be let through the same choice-based lettings scheme as any other council home, so bids matter.
Social rent is not the same as “affordable rent”. The flats were going to be let at 80% of market rent, which in this part of Acton is a materially different monthly figure from social rent. That switch is the substance of this decision, and it applies to all 95.
If you live near Bollo Lane, demolition is already under way and the site has three more years to run. Live and recently decided applications in the borough are searchable on Ealing’s planning register, and we track the larger ones on our Ealing planning page.
If you are buying or renting privately nearby, our Ealing house prices page tracks what homes in the borough actually sell for, and our roadworks and travel page covers current closures across the borough.
Sources
- A win for residents on housing waiting list (Ealing Council, 26 August 2026), for the 95 flats, the location, the tenure change, the bedroom mix, the demolition and 2028 completion, the 91% figure, the “more than 6,000 households” and Councillor Brett’s quote.
- Council goes big to tackle housing crisis (Ealing Council, 19 June 2025), for the 180 Southall homes, the 96 social rent and 84 London Living Rent split, the GLA Affordable Homes Programme funding, the early autumn 2026 date, the “almost 8,000” and “around 3,000”.
- A home run: more affordable homes coming soon (Ealing Council, 9 October 2025), for the 110 Acton homes, L&Q and Vistry Group, the autumn 2026 date, the “almost 7,500” and “more than 2,500”.
- Local Authority Housing Statistics, 2024 to 2025 (MHCLG), for the 7,813 households on Ealing’s housing register at 31 March 2025.
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